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Dorset and sometimes in the past called Dorsetshire, is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester, situated in the south of the county at 50°43'00?N, 02°26'00?W. Between its extreme points Dorset measures 50 miles (80 km) from east to west and 40 miles (64 km) north to south, and has an area of 1,024 square miles (2,652 km˛). Dorset borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. Around half of Dorset's population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation. The rest of the county is largely rural with a relatively low population density. Dorset's motto is 'Who's Afear'd'.

Dorset is famous for its beautiful coastline, the Jurassic Coast, which features landforms such as Lulworth Cove, the Isle of Portland, Chesil Beach and Durdle Door, as well as the holiday resorts of Bournemouth, Poole, Weymouth, Swanage, and Lyme Regis. Dorset is the setting of the novels of Thomas Hardy, who was born near Dorchester. The county has a long history of human settlement and some notable archaeology, including the hill forts of Maiden Castle and Hod Hill.

The site was featured on the television programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the South West (of the UK), and in a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Jurassic Coast was named as the 5th greatest natural wonder in Britain.

During World War II several sections of the Jurassic Coast became property of the then Ministry of War. One of the Royal Navy's largest bases was at Portland Harbour, though it has since closed. A major army base at Bovington remains in use today, and large areas of land, including the coast between Lulworth Cove and Kimmeridge, including Tyneham ghost village, is still only partially accessible. Areas of the coast near Exmouth, The Fleet at Weymouth and the beaches at Studland were also used for training during the war, but have since been returned to civilian use.

Parts of the coast, especially around Portland, can be very dangerous, and frequent shipwrecks have been a feature of the coast throughout recorded history. In January 2007 the coast experienced its most environmentally damaging wreck when the MSC Napoli, a 2,400 capacity container ship was beached at Branscombe near Sidmouth, losing oil and cargo.

West Bay forms a major gateway to the Jurassic Coast with the completion in 2004 of the Jurassic Pier. Weymouth is also a major gateway town, near the centre of the world heritage site. A World Heritage Coast Centre is to be built in the town by 2011

The Jurassic Period is a major unit of the geologic timescale that extends from about 199.6 ± 0.6 Ma (million years ago) to 145.4 ± 4.0 Ma, the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the start and end of the period are well identified but the exact dates are uncertain by 5 - 10 million years. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the "Age of Dinosaurs". The start of the period is marked by the major Triassic-Jurassic extinction event.

The Jurassic was named by Alexandre Brogniart for the extensive marine limestone exposures of the Jura Mountains, in the region where Germany, France and Switzerland meet.

During the early Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana; the Gulf of Mexico opened in the new rift between North America and what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was relatively narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous Period, when Gondwana itself rifted apart. The Tethys Sea closed, and the Neotethys basin appeared.